On the state of modern reading and writing
I’ve been re-reading a lot of Jack London’s works of late, and in doing so, I have learned a little about his outlooks on self-improvement, both as a writer and a person.
Now, I will preface this entry by acknowledging his problematic views. The man was an outspoken racist. Yet, I can still find value in the discipline and craft through which he so successfully molded his authorship.
For those unfamiliar with London, a couple of quick points: he was a socialist, a devout animal activist (openly battling circuses over animal cruelty), and an outspoken critic of the penal system’s brutality of his fellow man. And in confusingly stark contrast to those progressive leanings, he harbored a blatant racial prejudice, while elsewhere defending other marginalized groups, including the mentally disabled. Such were his inconsistencies, his profound contradictions.
In that context, I will neither defend nor sanitize him in this post.
What we cannot deny is London’s lasting impact on American literature. Most remember him for the novels The Call of the Wild and White Fang, and sometimes the short story “To Build a Fire.” However, he penned some fifty books and hundreds of short stories. And he was wildly, commercially, internationally successful for his time, becoming one of the first truly rich American authors. All this he did before dying at the age of 40.
So, what have I learned about writing from reading London’s works and the front and back matter of his collections?
Self-education and curiosity are far and away the most important aspects of being a writer. It's what drives us to read; it's what fuels our creativity. London wrote about this when describing the needs of great writing. The writer must be well-rounded and knowledgeable in all facets of life: the social, biological, environmental, and so on. To have this knowledge, to know it firsthand, is to have a wealth of inspiration from which stories of interest are born.
Those are the stories I like to read, and those are the ones I want to write.
As a reader, I can usually tell when the author is writing without the necessary dirt beneath their nails. And it bores me. Stories—good stories—are born from that dirt, from real struggle and observation and understanding of real life and conflict, not solely fabrication. There is far more truth behind good fiction than the reader will ever consciously know, and the best fiction has the most truth behind it.
So, peers of mine, I encourage you to learn. Learn things. Learn anything, it all helps. So many of you get caught up in studying only the craft of writing that you deny yourselves the opportunities that truly help you become effective storytellers.
Write what you know …
I think people misinterpret the intention behind this advice. It's not really about writing what you know. It's about using what you know. (By the way, what I know is that “it’s not X, it’s Y” sounds like AI. And I know I have written that here. And I despise that this cadence has been tainted so.)
To know a thing and to set out to write about that thing is to focus on that thing rather than focusing on the story. If you write what you know instead of using what you know, you are crafting an essay rather than a story. Don’t do that. Write the story, and in the process of doing so, use what you know to add depth and create and resolve conflict. You won't even know what you know until you start writing it, until the scene demands it, until the character or setting begs for it, and that is the importance of building a wealth of knowledge through curiosity.
So be curious.
Be curious and …
Read! For God's sake, read!
There's been plenty of discussion online already regarding declining literacy rates, so I won't waste time repeating those talking points. I will waste time commenting on it, though. I say it's wasted time because let's be honest, if you're not reading critically or at all, you're not reading some indie author's blog post.
Anyway, people talk about this literacy crisis without actually understanding the depth of it. It’s not just that fewer people are reading and those that do are reading less. It’s also that people are not interpreting what they’re consuming. They’re letting others do that for them. They watch movies and television and read and listen to books and rather than thinking about what they just consumed, they go online to shape their opinions and understanding based on the talking points of others.
So don't merely consume the written or spoken word, contemplate it. If that means you need to slow down your reading, so be it.
(My wife remarks on my reading speed, which can be likened to that of a grandfatherly stroll. But that’s just, like, her opinion, man.)
The Internet conditions us to consume, consume, consume, now, now, now. And this conditioning has people skipping text between dialogue and listening to audiobooks at 2-3 times speed. And those that do are further and further rewiring their brains. I beg you not to do this with the stories you enjoy. Good fiction is written with intentionality, with purpose, and understanding that purpose develops the analytical thinking skills that help you navigate the real world.
Plus it keeps you from looking foolish when you post brainless reviews of the books and films you gave only a fraction of your focus.
Go feed curiosity. Go be a reader.
-CCR
